Between revelation and first care: Family and sexual abuse

Abstract

There is a time interval between the sexual abuse itself and its revelation in the family. There is little knowledge about this time period. The goal of this research was to understand what happens with the families in the period between the revelation of sexual abuse and the start of the specialized first care. The research took part in a public institution where ten interviews were conducted with nine families that lived a situation of sexual abuse. The results were divided between information about family configuration and the period of time in which there was silence about the situation of sexual abuse before it actually became known: 1) About the family configuration: mothers are present in most of the families with the intra-familial sexual abuse taking precedence over the extra-familial; most of the victims are girls of an average age of 8 years and 8 months. 2) About the period of time between the revelation of sexual abuse and the first care: the sexual abuse happened on average 27 months before the interview at the institution; the average time of the sexual abuse itself is 13 months before its revelation; and the time interval from the revelation of sexual abuse to its denouncement is 7 months. The revelation of sexual abuse is perceived by the family as an additional threat to all the other predicaments with which the family sees itself confronted, originating paradoxical reactions that range from protection to immobility. When families seek out the health care institution they are confused and distanced from the situation of violence in which they live. The time between the sexual abuse, the revelation, and the search for help depends on the family interaction and needs to be seen more as a time for elaboration and coming to terms with the experience that they are suffering.